by John Irving
She explained that Curly should simply inquire--of every customer--about Ocean View. Curly had never thought concretely about what he would do or say to Homer Wells if he ever encountered him again; he was resentful, but he was not a vengeful boy and he had a sudden, clear memory of Melony's violence. He became suspicious.
"What do you want to find Homer for?" Curly asked.
"What for?" Melony asked sweetly; it wasn't clear if she had considered it. "Well, what would you like to find him for, Curly?" she asked.
"Well," Curly said, struggling. "I guess I'd just like to see him, and tell him that I was really fucked up by his going off and leaving me there--when I thought I was the one who should be going, instead of him." When Curly thought about it, he realized he'd just like to see Homer Wells--maybe be his friend, maybe do stuff together. He'd always admired Homer. If he felt a little deserted by him, that was all he felt. He started to cry. Melony used the paper napkin that went with her ice-cream soda to wipe Curly's tears for him.
"Hey, I know what you mean," she said nicely. "I know how you feel. I got left, too, you know. Really, I just miss the guy. I just want to see him."
Curly's weeping attracted the attention of one of his adoptive parents, Mr. Rinfret, the pharmacist, who was stationed in that end of the store where the serious drugs were dispensed.
"I'm from Saint Cloud's," Melony explained to Mr. Rinfret. "We were all so close there--whenever we run into each other, it takes a little gettin' used to." She hugged Curly in a motherly, if somewhat burly way, and Mr. Rinfret allowed them their privacy.
"Try to remember, Curly," Melony whispered, rocking the boy in her arms as if she were telling him a bedtime story. "Ocean View, just keep asking about Ocean View." When she calmed him down, she gave him Lorna's address in Bath.
On her way back to Bath, Melony hoped that the shipyards would hire her back and that the so-called war effort would keep the stuff on the assembly line changing--that she might look forward to a task somewhat different from the insertion of those ball bearings into that hamlike sprocket. With that thought she removed Lorna's gift mitten from the pocket of Mrs. Grogan's overcoat; she had not yet needed it as a weapon but many nights its presence had comforted her. And it's not been a thoroughly wasted year, Melony reflected warmly, socking the heavy mitten with a painful smack into the palm of her big hand. Now there are four of us looking for you, Sunshine.
They kept Wally in Texas, yet they moved him once more--to Lubbock Flying School (Barracks 12, D3). He would spend November and most of December there, but the Army Air Corps had promised to send him home for Christmas.
"Soon to be in the bosom of my family!" he wrote to Candy, and Homer, and Olive--and even to Ray, who had contributed to the war effort by joining the force of mechanics at the Navy Yard in Kittery; Ray was building torpedoes. He had hired some local boys who were still in school to help him keep his lobster business from sinking, and he worked on the vehicles at Ocean View on the weekends. He enthusiastically demonstrated the gyroscope on Olive's kitchen table to Olive and Homer Wells.
"Before a fella can fathom the torpedo," Ray liked to say, "he has to understand the gyroscope." Homer was interested, Olive was polite--and what's more, thoroughly dependent on Ray; if he didn't fix all the machinery at Ocean View, Olive was convinced that the apples would stop growing.
Candy was cross much of the time--everyone's war effort seemed to depress her, although she had volunteered to pitch in herself and had worked some very long hours at the Cape Kenneth Hospital as a nurse's aide. She agreed it would be "indulgent" to go to college, and she'd had no trouble convincing Homer that he should pitch in, too--with his background, he could be a more useful nurse's aide than most.
"Right," Homer had said.
But if Homer had returned to a semi-hospital life against his will, he soon found he felt comfortable there; however, it was at times difficult to withhold his expert opinion on certain subjects and to play the beginner in a role he was disquietingly born to. Even the nurses were condescending to the nurse's aides, and Homer was irritated to see that the doctors were condescending to everyone--most of all, to their patients.
Candy and Homer were not allowed to give shots or medication, but they had more to do than make beds, empty bedpans, give back rubs and baths, and run those errands of friendliness that gave the modern hospital such a constant scuff of feet. They were given delivery-room duties, for example; Homer was unimpressed with the obstetrical procedure he witnessed. It could not hold a candle to Dr. Larch's work, and in some cases it could not hold a candle to his own. If Dr. Larch had often criticized Homer for his heavy touch with ether, Homer could not imagine how the old man would react to the heavy-handedness that was applied to that inhalation at Cape Kenneth Hospital. In St. Cloud's, Homer had seen many patients who were so lightly etherized that they could converse throughout their own operations; in Cape Kenneth's recovery rooms, the patients struggling to emerge from their ether doses looked bludgeoned--they snored gap-mouthed, with their hands hanging deadweight and the muscles in their cheeks so slack that at times their eyes were pulled half open.
It especially angered Homer to see how they dosed the children--as if the doctors or the anesthesiologists were so uninformed that they didn't pause to consider the patient's body weight.
One day he sat with Candy on either side of a five-year-old boy who was recovering from a tonsillectomy. That was nurses'-aide work: you sat with the patients coming out of ether, especially the children, especially the tonsillectomies--they were often frightened and in pain and nauseous when they woke. Homer claimed they wouldn't be nearly so nauseous if they'd been given a little less ether.
One of the nurses was in the recovery room with them; it was the one they liked--a young, homely girl about their age. Her name was Caroline, and she was nice to the patients and tough to the doctors.
"You know a lot about ether, Homer," Nurse Caroline said.
"It seems overused to me, in certain cases," Homer mumbled.
"Hospitals aren't perfect, they're just expected to be," Nurse Caroline said. "And doctors aren't perfect, either; they just think they are."
"Right," said Homer Wells.
The five-year-old's throat was very sore when he finally woke up, and he went on retching for quite some time before any ice cream would slide down his throat, and stay down. One of the things the nurses' aides did was to be sure that the children, in such condition, didn't choke on their own vomit. Homer explained to Candy that it was very important that the child, in a semi-etherized state, not aspirate, or inhale, any fluid such as vomit into the lungs.
"Aspirate," Nurse Caroline said. "Was your father a doctor, Homer?"
"Not exactly," said Homer Wells.
It was Nurse Caroline who introduced Homer to young Dr. Harlow, who was in the throes of growing out his bangs; a cowlick persisted in making his forehead look meager; a floppy shelf of straw-colored hair gave Dr. Harlow's eyes the constant anxiousness of someone peering from under the brim of a hat.
"Oh yes, Wells--our ether expert," Dr. Harlow said snidely.
"I grew up in an orphanage," said Homer Wells. "I did a lot of helping out around the hospital."
"But surely you never administered any ether?" said Dr. Harlow.
"Surely not," lied Homer Wells. As Dr. Larch had discovered with the board of trustees, it was especially gratifying to lie to unlikable people.
"Don't show off," Candy told Homer when they were driving back to Heart's Haven together. "It doesn't become you, and it could get your Doctor Larch in trouble."
"When did I show off?" Homer asked.
"You really haven't, yet," Candy said. "Just don't, okay?"
Homer sulked.
"And don't sulk," Candy told him. "That doesn't become you, either."
"I'm just waiting and seeing," said Homer Wells. "You know how that is." He let her out at the lobster pound; he usually came in with her and chatted with Ray. But Homer was mistaken to c
onfuse Candy's irritability either with coldness toward him or with anything but the profoundest confusion of her own.
She slammed the door and walked around to his side of the van before he could drive away. She indicated he should roll down his window. Then she leaned inside and kissed him on the mouth, she yanked his hair, hard--with both hands, tilting his head back--and then she bit him, quite sharply, in the throat. She banged her head on the window frame when she pulled herself back from him; her eyes were watery, but no tears spilled to her face.
"Do you think I'm having a good time?" she asked him. "Do you think I'm teasing you? Do you think I know whether I want you or Wally?"
He drove back to Cape Kenneth Hospital; he needed work more substantial than mousing. It was the Goddamn mousing season again--how he hated handling the poison!
He arrived simultaneously with a sailor slashed up in a knife fight; it had happened where Ray worked--in Kittery Navy Yard--and the sailor's buddies had driven him around in a makeshift tourniquet, running out of gas coupons and getting lost on the way to several hospitals much nearer to the scene of the fight than the one in Cape Kenneth. The gash, into the fleshy web between the sailor's thumb and forefinger, extended nearly to the sailor's wrist. Homer helped Nurse Caroline wash the wound with ordinary white soap and sterile water. Homer could not help himself--he was accustomed to speaking to Nurse Angela and to Nurse Edna in the voice of an authority.
"Take his blood pressure, opposite arm," he said to Nurse Caroline, "and put the blood-pressure cuff on over a bandage--to protect the skin," he added, because Nurse Caroline was staring at him curiously. "The cuff might have to be on there for a half hour or more," said Homer Wells.
"I think I can give instructions to Nurse Caroline, if you don't mind," Dr. Harlow said to Homer; both the doctor and his nurse stared at Homer Wells as if they had witnessed an ordinary animal touched with divine powers--as if they half expected Homer to pass his hand over the profusely bleeding sailor and stop the flow of blood as quickly as the tourniquet stopped it.
"Very neat job, Wells," Dr. Harlow said. Homer observed the injection of the 0.5 percent Procaine into the wound and the subsequent probing of Dr. Harlow. The knife had entered on the palmar side of the hand, observed Homer Wells. He remembered his Gray's, and he remembered the movie he had seen with Debra Pettigrew: the cavalry officer with the arrow in his hand, the arrow that fortunately missed the branch of the median nerve that goes to the muscles of the thumb. He watched the sailor move his thumb.
Dr. Harlow was looking. "There's a rather important branch of the median nerve," Dr. Harlow said slowly, to the cut-up sailor. "You're lucky if that's not cut."
"The knife missed it," said Homer Wells.
"Yes, it did," said Dr. Harlow, looking up from the wound. "How do you know?" he asked Homer Wells, who held up the thumb of his right hand and wiggled it.
"Not only an ether expert, I see," said Dr. Harlow, still snidely. "Knows all about muscles, too!"
"Just about that one," said Homer Wells. "I used to read Gray's Anatomy--for fun," he added.
"For fun?" said Dr. Harlow. "I suppose you know all about blood vessels, then. Why not tell me where all this blood is coming from."
Homer Wells felt Nurse Caroline brush his hand with her hip; it was surely sympathetic contact--Nurse Caroline didn't care for Dr. Harlow, either. Despite Candy's certain disapproval, Homer couldn't help himself. "The blood vessel is a branch of the palmar arch," he said.
"Very good," said Dr. Harlow, disappointed. "And what would you recommend I do about it?"
"Tie it," said Homer Wells. "Three-o chromic."
"Precisely," said Dr. Harlow. "You didn't get that from Gray's." He pointed out to Homer Wells that the knife had also cut the tendons of the flexor digitorum profundus and the flexor digitorum sublimis. "And where might they go?" he asked Homer Wells.
"To the index finger," Homer said.
"Is it necessary to repair both tendons?" asked Dr. Harlow.
"I don't know," said Homer Wells. "I don't know a lot about tendons," he added.
"How surprising!" said Dr. Harlow. "It is only necessary to repair the profundus," he explained. "I'm going to use two-o silk. I'll need something finer to bring the edges of the tendon together."
"Four-o silk," recommended Homer Wells.
"Very good," said Dr. Harlow. "And something to close the palmar fascia?"
"Three-o chromic," said Homer Wells.
"This boy knows his stitches!" Dr. Harlow said to Nurse Caroline, who was staring intently at Homer Wells.
"Close the skin with four-o silk," Homer said. "And then I'd recommend a pressure dressing on the palm--you'll want to curve the fingers a little bit around the dressing."
"That's called 'the position of function,' " Dr. Harlow said.
"I don't know what it's called," Homer said.
"Were you ever in medical school, Wells?" Dr. Harlow asked him.
"Not exactly," said Homer Wells.
"Do you plan to go?" Dr. Harlow asked.
"It's not likely," Homer said. He tried to leave the operating room then, but Dr. Harlow called after him.
"Why aren't you in the service?" he called.
"I've got a heart problem," Homer said.
"I don't suppose you know what it's called," said Dr. Harlow.
"Right," said Homer Wells.
He might have found out about his pulmonary valve stenosis on the spot, if he had only asked; he might have had an X ray, and an expert reading--he could have learned the truth. But who seeks the truth from unlikable sources?
He went and read some stories to the tonsillectomy patients. They were all dumb stories--children's books didn't impress Homer Wells. But the tonsillectomy patients were not likely to be around long enough to hear David Copperfield or Great Expectations.
Nurse Caroline asked him if he would give a bath and a back rub to the large man recovering from the prostate operation.
"Don't ever underestimate the pleasure of pissing," the big man told Homer Wells.
"No, sir," Homer said, rubbing the mountain of flesh until the big man shone a healthy pink.
Olive was not home when Homer returned to Ocean View; it was her time for plane spotting. They used what was called the yacht-watching tower at the Haven Club, but Homer didn't think any planes had been spotted. All the men spotters--most of them Senior's former drinking companions--had the silhouettes of the enemy planes tacked on their lockers; the women brought the silhouettes home and stuck them on places like the refrigerator door. Olive was a plane spotter for two hours every day.
Homer studied the silhouettes that Olive had on the refrigerator.
I could learn all those, he was thinking. And I can learn everything there is to know about apple farming. But what he already knew, he knew, was near-perfect obstetrical procedure and the far easier procedure--the one that was against the rules.
He thought about rules. That sailor with the slashed hand had not been in a knife fight that was according to anyone's rules. In a fight with Mr. Rose, there would be Mr. Rose's own rules, whatever they were. A knife fight with Mr. Rose would be like being pecked to death by a small bird, thought Homer Wells. Mr. Rose was an artist--he would take just the tip of a nose, just a button or a nipple. The real cider house rules were Mr. Rose's.
And what were the rules at St. Cloud's? What were Larch's rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace--and with what confidence? Clearly Candy was observing some rules, but whose? And did Wally know what the rules were? And Melony--did Melony obey any rules? wondered Homer Wells.
"Look," said Lorna. "There's a war, have you noticed?"
"So what?" said Melony.
"Because he's probably in it, that's so what!" Lorna said. "Because he either enlisted or he's gonna get drafted."
Melony shook her head. "I can't see him in a war, not him. He just doesn't belong there."
"For Christ's sake," Lorna said. "You think e
veryone in a war belongs there?"
"If he goes, then he'll come back," Melony said. The ice on the Kennebec in December was not secure; it was a tidal river, it was brackish, and there was open water, gray and choppy, in the middle. But not even Melony could throw a beer bottle as far as the middle of that river in Bath. Her bottle, bounding off the creaky ice, made a hollow sound and rolled toward the open water it couldn't reach. It disturbed a gull, who got up and walked a short way along the ice, like an old woman holding up a number of cumbersome petticoats above a puddle.
"Not everyone's comin' back from this war--that's all I'm sayin'," Lorna replied.
Wally had trouble coming back from Texas. There were a series of delays, and bad weather; the landing field was closed--when Homer and Candy picked him up in Boston, the first thing he told them was that he had only forty-eight hours. He was still happy, however--"He was still Wally," Candy would say later--and especially pleased that he'd received his commission.
"Second Lieutenant Worthington!" Wally announced to Olive. Everyone cried, even Ray.
With the gas rationing, they couldn't manage the usual driving around and around. Homer wondered when Wally would want to be alone with Candy and how they would manage it. Surely he wants to manage it, Homer thought. Does she want to, too? he wondered.
For Christmas Eve everyone was together. And Christmas Day there was nowhere to go; Olive was home, and Ray wasn't building torpedoes or pulling lobster traps. And the day after Christmas, Candy and Homer would have to take Wally back to Boston.
Oh, Candy and Wally did plenty of hugging and kissing--everyone could see that. On Christmas night, in Wally's bedroom, Homer realized that he'd been so glad to see Wally that he'd forgotten to notice very much about his second Christmas away from St. Cloud's. He also realized he'd forgotten to send Dr. Larch anything--not even a Christmas card.
"I've got more flying school to get through," Wally was saying, "but I think it's going to be India for me."
"India," said Homer Wells.
"The Burma run," said Wally. "To go from India to China, you got to go over Burma. The Japs are in Burma."
Homer Wells had studied the maps at Cape Kenneth High. He knew that Burma was mountains, that Burma was jungles. When they shot your plane down, there would be quite a wide range of possible things to land on.
